One of the best elements of the graphics of Driveclub are its environments, which is quite peculiar for a racing game. The genre normally sees ultra-realistic cars and rather lackluster vistas around them. Yet, Evolution Studios went to great lengths to put their cars in a world that doesn’t pale when compared with its beautiful supercars.

The developers didn’t reproduce any location one to one, but they definitely took their inspiration from real life, and NeoGAF user nib95 found a valley in Canada that looks strikingly similar to the footage we saw of Driveclub‘s Canadian tracks (pictures are courtesy of the Tour Pacific 2011 blog).

Here’s approximately the same area displayed in Google Maps, allowing you to explore it and “drive” around on your own, catching an even better glimpse on just how similar the whole area looks to Driveclub‘s track (and the other way around), and on how the visual fidelity of the game creates an extremely realistic effect.

The area shown is focused around the Southern Yellowhead Highway, which runs in the middle of the valley of the North Thompson river in British Columbia, between Vavemby and Valemount.

Below you can see another video of the game, and another location in Google Maps showing where the road strays a little father from the river. Again, you can use Google Maps to “drive” around, and see just how similar the environment looks. Of course the road in the game turns and twists a lot more, but that’s an obvious change to achieve better gameplay.

Finally, here are more pictures of the location, giving just a few more glimpses on the area. At the bottom of the post there’s also the whole Google Maps itinerary. You can click on “view larger map” and drag and drop the little yellow man icon found at the bottom right on the highlighted route to see more in Street View.